the boiled frog
It occurred to me recently that people who have not been one-half of a codependent relationship may not understand what it feels like to unconsciously hand your power over to the person you fell in love with. And how quickly codependency can turn into manipulation, isolation, and abuse. And how THAT can have lasting effects, like a lack of confidence, intuition, and self-trust.
I was watching Imperfect Women with my partner. Spoiler coming up. It was the recent episode where we find out just how manipulative Howard is with his wife Mary. As the scenes stacked up, my partner began to react to his psychological tactics.
Whoa. He's a dick. Does she not realize he's a dick?
Of course she knows, I thought... But that's her husband, and they have little kids. And she's in it. She's locked in it. She's a stay at home mom who hasn't worked in like two decades. What's she gonna do... leave? Yeah sure. Plus, to her, this is and has been normal behavior for him. He gets the last say. She kowtows to him, careful not to upset him or counter his opinions.
My own experience with this same flavor of manipulation crossed my mind, colored my perspective, and made my chest tighten. As the episode went on, we understood the hold Howard had on Mary, and why she didn't push back on him. Mary has an Adderall addiction, and Howard uses that against her. He guilts her, using their kids. He gaslights her into dismissing her reality. Shames her into submission.
Days after watching that episode, I'm still thinking about it. Thinking about the way my partner reacted to Howard mistreating his wife versus my reaction. Thinking about how there must be others who witness manipulation—and abuse, even—and immediately wonder why the person on the receiving end doesn't say or do something about it. Do they not know how difficult that really is in practice? To stick up for yourself after years of losing yourself. To confront the person you've given your agency to. It's not as easy as you think. Especially because for many, it's a slow boil.
the slow boil
When you cook a frog, you don't drop it into boiling water, because it'll hop right out. You stick it into room temperature water, where it's comfortable. You let it think it's safe. Then you slowly, but steadily, turn the heat up. As the degrees climb, your frog stays in. It doesn't realize it's getting boiled alive.
The same is true for those of us who enter a cycle of abuse that starts with what appears to be love and safety. You don't realize you're slowly being boiled alive when he gives you the cold shoulder a few times. You don't even realize it when he calls you out of your name during that fight. Especially because it was you who made him so angry in the first place. You might take pause when he smacks you a couple years later, but by then, you've got more reasons to stay than leave. You've covered for his outbursts a few times by now, too, so who will believe you when you try to leave? And your relationship with your family has slowly tapered off over the years, by his design of course. So who do you really have outside of him? Who will help you with the kids? How will you make it without him?
you probably know her
Maybe she was the loud one.. or the creative one. The one who had opinions about everything and wasn't shy about saying them out loud. And then she met someone and something changed. And you can't quite name what. She's still there.
She answers texts, eventually. But she's different now. Maybe less sure. She cancels more than she used to. She doesn't talk about the thing she loved anymore—the painting, the writing, the business idea she wouldn't shut up about. When you ask how she's doing she says fine...and that's about all you get. You think, she's changed. You think, I don't know her anymore. Or maybe you know about the issues between her and her partner and wonder, *why doesn't she just leave? That question is what this is about.
She is tired. Not she-needs-sleep-tired, but tired because she lives in a body that is always bracing for her environment. She's been running on adrenaline so long it's become her baseline. She doesn't even register it as stress anymore. This is life for her. Her skin breaks out in deep, cystic hormonal acne. Her stomach is unpredictable and leaves her doubled over on the toilet because her gut is always twisted. We all know the body keeps score.
This is the important part.
Her body has been trying to tell her something for a long time. But she's learned not to trust herself. That happened slowly, and it happened because she loved someone, and because love can be the exact mechanism through which a certain kind of person takes everything.
She didn't hand her power over because she is a weak person. She handed it over because she was loving someone the way she'd always been taught love worked. You manage. You adjust. You keep the peace. You read the room and respond accordingly. You make yourself smaller so the other person can feel bigger and you call it compromise and devotion and being a good partner.
If she grew up in a house where love had conditions, she was primed for this. She learned early how to track someone else's mood for her own safety. She knew it was her job to keep the temperature down. She didn't learn it in this relationship. She came in already fluent. Already practiced. That's a child who figured out how to stay safe, grown into a woman who doesn't yet know she doesn't have to anymore.
Gaslighting is not easy to detect. The very way it works is by confusing her, convincing her that she is somehow always the problem. That her memory is unreliable. That her reactions are too big, too much, disproportionate to whatever happened. The story gets retold over and over until her version of events disappears. Her feelings get reframed as attacks. She ends up apologizing for things she didn't do and sometimes isn't even sure she did or didn't do anymore.
After enough of all of that, she stops trusting herself. Not dramatically and not right away. She just... starts double-checking. Running things by him before she trusts her own point of view. Waiting to see how he responds before she decides how she feels.
Then, one day, his last word makes their decisions. And after awhile, he doesn't even have to demand that it does because she has learned, through consistent conditioning, that having an opinion costs her. So she doesn't disagree. She gets quiet and lets it go. She picks her battles until she stops picking them at all. This is what walking on eggshells actually feels like from the inside. It is exhausting. How do I move through this moment without setting something off? Every conversation and interaction gets filtered through that question until it becomes automatic and reflexive. Until she doesn't even know she's doing it anymore.
Her identity, by this point, is largely a reflection of what he thinks it is. She stopped painting because he found it self-indulgent. She stopped calling her friends as much because it caused tension. Her dreams have gotten smaller and more practical; she's molded her life around his. The version of herself that wanted things has gone silent. From the outside it looks like she's changed. Maybe she looks more grown up or settled down or serious. But from the inside, something is missing. She misses herself. But she doesn't know that yet.
"just leave, then"
So when you ask why she doesn't just leave, you have to understand what leaving requires. It requires trusting yourself enough to believe what you experienced was actually real. She's been taught her perception is faulty. It requires believing you deserve better. She's been taught—thoroughly—that this is what she deserves. It requires imagining a life on the other side, and right now she's exhausted. She does not have the bandwidth to imagine Thursday, let alone a different life.
Leaving isn't simple. It isn't a decision you make once. It usually happens after a reconstruction of a self that was slowly taken apart, and you cannot rush that from the outside, and you cannot shame someone into it, and you cannot love her into it fast enough, no matter how bad you want to.
I know it's uncomfortable to watch.
What you can do is remember her. Remember the friend or daughter or sister you used to stay up all night on the phone with. The one who's laugh made you laugh from your belly. She is still in there. You haven't forgotten her but she has forgotten herself. So remind her. Of the memories you shared, of the talents she possesses. But be prepared. She might not be ready. She might deflect, minimize, close off.
Tell her anyway. Plant it. Leave it somewhere she can find it later when she needs it. The self that she buried is still listening. It's just waiting for someone who remembers to conjure it back up.